On 25 Sep 2013, at 06:39, meekerdb wrote:
On 9/24/2013 9:21 PM, LizR wrote:
On 25 September 2013 16:03, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 9/24/2013 8:44 PM, LizR wrote:
On 25 September 2013 15:41, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 9/24/2013 6:32 PM, LizR wrote:
On 25 September 2013 13:38, Russell Standish
<li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:
This is also true of materialism. Whether you think this is a
problem
or not depends on whether you think the "hard problem" is a
problem or not.
Indeed. I was about to say something similar (to the effect that
it's hard to imagine how "mere atoms" can have sights, sounds,
smells etc either).
As a rule, if you want to explain X you need to start from
something without X.
Absolutely.
If you know of such an explanation, or even the outlines of one,
I'd be interested to hear it. As Russell said, this is the so-
called "hard problem" so any light (or sound, touch etc) on it
would be welcome.
My 'solution' to the hard problem is to prognosticate that when we
have built intelligent robots we will have learned the significance
of having an internal narrative memory. We will have learned what
emotions and feelings are at the level of sensors and computation
and action. And when we have done that 'the hard problem' will be
seen to have been an idle question - like "What is life." proved to
be in the 20th century.
Yes, that certainly seems like a possible solution (or maybe
"dissolution") to the problem, although I wouldn't say that "what
is life?" proved to be an idle question. Some of the proposed
solutions turned out to be "idle" (such as ones involving an "elan
vital", which of course didn't answer the question at all). Life is
intimately bound up with at least two major fields (evolution and
computation) and we've learned a lot about a lot of things by
studying it (and we aren't finished yet, I would say).
Right. "Idle" isn't exactly the right word. I think that like
"life" consciousness will be seen to be different things and there
will be distinguished different kinds of consciousness and we'll
design robots to have more or less and this kind or that. And we'll
design drugs and brain implants to change and augment human brains
based on our understanding of these different things that we now
tend to lump under "consciousness".
So that answers Russell's question, at least from your point of
view as (I assume) a "primary materialist", and (interestingly,
IMHO) equally answers the criticism (if it was intended as such)
that Craig leveled against comp.
As I understand Bruno's theory it also 'dissolves' the hard problem
by reducing it to a property of certain logics, namely a
computational system is (or can be) conscious if it is Lobian, i.e.
if it can prove Godel's incompleteness about itself. This seems too
narrowly technical to me (does it actually have to have done the
proof, or just be potentially able to do it?), but I can see that it
would be a facet of intelligence that would contribute a certain
aspect of consciousness.
Of course Bruno proposes that the logic (as in arithmetic for
example) exists in platonia and that the physical world is just an
aspect of relations in arithmetic. I'm not sure about that, but I
suspect that if fully worked out the derivative physical world will
prove necessary for the logic to produce consciousness - so physics
is maybe not so derivative.
It has to be, by the UDA reasoning. If it is not, and some physical
aspect remains non derivable, then we will have a tool to measure our
degree of non-comp, and our degree of materialism.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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